Vin Diesel thinks that the chances of “Furious 7” being nominated for an Oscar will be hindered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “stigma towards action films.”
“Do I shy away from aiming high? No, I don’t,” the actor who previously said the sequel “will win Best Picture” told the Associated Press. “And yet we all know that there’s a little stigma towards action films, we know it, we’ve heard people complain about it.”
“We’ve heard Marvel complain about it, we’ve heard DC complain about it, and now Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Batman has never gotten a shot at that,” he continued in Beijing while promoting the April 3 release from Universal Pictures.
Diesel thinks the Academy could benefit from nominating Paul Walker‘s final film, which he called “very powerful.”
“The Oscars have been somewhat criticized in the last couple of years for maybe not being as populist as they could be, but we have a very powerful movie here,” he said.
Diesel went on to say that the more emotional angle of “Furious 7” is due to a large rise in the franchise’s female audience.
“We’re actually responding to the fact that our woman audience has just increased and has either eclipsed or threatening to eclipse our male audience,” he said. “We’ve seen that across the board.”
Whether or not it wins an Oscar, it’s sure to win the box office. The groundswell of love for Walker, who has starred in all but one of the movies in the blockbuster franchise, is driving pre-release projections of a record-breaking $100 million opening weekend.